Lonely Lotuses
by RoseblossomWarrior
Summary: When Ren comes to challenge Yoh to a rematch, he gets more than he bargained for when a strange ghost asks for his help. But who is she, and why does she insist on Ren's help? For Ren's birthday. Threeshot.
1. Chapter 1

**January 1, 2012: **HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MY LOVELY HUSBANDO. FUNNY HOW PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD CELEBRATE YOUR BIRTHDAY. :3

So anyways, my lack of action for the past month on FFnet has been to work on this baby. 8D My threeshot for Ren's birthday. ^_^ If my math isn't horribly, horribly wrong (it's vacation week, okay?), he's 26 today~! YAY REN! Happy birthday again my hubby. ;D

...He and I will be together forever. O.O

Anyway, that aside, like I said this is a threeshot fic. (Hehe, get it? Three?) However when I first wrote this it was separated into 6 chapters - I was going to use some lame excuse that six is a lucky Chinese number - but I just couldn't _not _have this be a threefic. However, each chapter is split into two parts because there were certain flashback scenes that were at the beginning of each chapter that I didn't want to edit out.

_**NOTES PLEASE READ**_: Ren's Chinese name is _Lian_, which is actually a girl's name and means "lotus"; _Ming Yue _means "bright moon"; _at certain points in some chapters when characters are speaking Mandarin and they are around Japanese characters, the words will be italicized like this to make point that the character is speaking Mandarin - _when characters are speaking Mandarin and they are alone, the font is regular; there are flashback scenes at the beginning of each part (not saying who the flashback POV is!); AND VERY IMPORTANTLY, this takes place a few months or so after the KZB ending when Hao...you know...*SPOILER* becomes even more of a badass (I might say the exact date in here but I don't remember), so I'm pretty sure most things should be canon...ish. For the most part, canon manga is followed, but we'll see an anime adaptation in here.

**_ALSO VERY IMPORTANTO:_** One or two elements of the SK world about spirits is tampered with a little bit, you'll see what I mean toward the end of the fic.

Nothing else comes to mind for me to say. I'm off to celebrate Ren's birthday. ^_^ Hope you have a good day! Enjoy, leave a review, and the next chapter will hopefully be up tomorrow!

Special thanks to shamanhearts! She was my guinea pig for this project. However, even she doesn't know how it's turning out. ;D

* * *

><p><strong>Lonely Lotuses, Dark Moon<strong>

**Chapter One**

**Part One**

**~Three Years Ago~**

Dusk was gathering on the city of Tokyo. In the distance, the girl could hear the sounds of cars honking and people shouting, but the particular sidewalk she was walking on was nearly empty. Only the occasional car passed by; rush hour had passed, and this was a bit more of a quiet side-street, with mostly apartments and very small businesses on the sidewalk.

The girl was obviously Chinese, but instead of just wearing a regular shirt and jeans, she had on a casual blue kimono with the pattern of silver flowers, the color of which matched the hair band that was placed at the top of her long, dark hair. Her violet eyes were fixed upon the ground in front of her feet as she walked, and her facial muscles were twitching slightly, as if she were having an internal conflict.

And in fact, she was.

She took a moment to stop and look at her surroundings to check where she was. A hundred feet or so ahead—well, she didn't have a good judge of distance—was an intersection. She could see a figure walking up to the crosswalk. She had an absolutely absurd thought of who it could be—and her thought wasn't even remotely true in the slightest, but her anxiety had mounted—and she ducked into an open store.

Her heart was pounding so much, but she still somehow heard the cashier as he said, "Good after—are you feeling all right?"

The girl blinked as she put a hand up to one of her temples. "Mm? Oh, yes, I am." Her Japanese was rigid and lacked any contractions. There was no doubt that it was not her first language.

The cashier, who was probably in his forties and had brown hair and light brown eyes, smiled, and the light wrinkles in his face fit comfortably around his warm features. "Not a native, huh?"

The girl was a little confused by his amicable attitude, but she was too anxious to question it. "No," she replied. "My sister and I are studying here," she answered truthfully.

The man nodded. "Would you like something?" he asked, motioning towards the shelves. For the first time, she noticed that the small store was actually a bakery, with several types of bread and other goods, like French croissants, lying on the various surfaces. Her stomach was swirling with nerves, and she honestly thought she might puke if she ate, but she had the sense to think that eating might calm her anxiety. She nodded and began to look at the food wares, knowing that she had to get something small or her stomach would hate her.

Outside, the sound of someone shouting caught her and the man's attention. Curiously, but also hesitantly, she approached the open door and peered outside, the cashier hurrying to look as well.

What the two of them saw happening occurred too fast to truly take in. The images the girl took in were the sparks and the massive thing barreling off the road and onto the sidewalk toward them.

And at the edge of her vision, seen but not seen so far off in the distance, was an outline.

Wordlessly, the cashier grabbed the girl by the arms and shoved her back further into the shop. With what sounded like the sound of thunder, whatever-it-was smashed into the side of the shop. Glass broke and flew everywhere, along with parts of the wall and tables.

The girl wasn't sure what exactly hit her, but pain blossomed all around her body, especially in her arm. She fell, hitting her head, and within seconds everything was dark.

()()()()()()

"_The moon fades and then hides itself. After that comes a moment of darkness. There is nothing more wonderful than darkness."_

()()()()()()

**~Present Day~**

Ren closed his eyes and allowed himself to be visually surrounded by darkness. "Yes, Yoh," he said into the cell phone.

Yoh's voice, as always, was bright and cheery, though it was even more so at the moment. "That's great, Ren! I'll call everyone, and when you get here we'll have a huge dinner and everything…what, Ryu?" he said, his voice becoming a bit distant on the other end of the line. Ren was about to strain his ears to hear better, but suddenly Yoh's voice rose in pitch. "A-Anna needs me? Gotta go, Ren," he said quickly, and a second later the line went dead.

Ren snapped his phone shut, not knowing whether to be annoyed or amused by the hasty goodbye, although he was secretly a bit more swayed by the latter emotion. He slipped his phone back into his coat pocket.

"I assume Yoh-kun's happy to hear that we're coming to the inn?" Jun asked him.

Ren finally opened his eyes. "He's a carefree lunatic. Of course he is, Jun."

Her smiled widened, and she turned to Pailong, who sat beside her. "It'll be so much fun, Pailong…"

She continued talking, but Ren turned the two of them out a bit. The three of them were currently on a train, heading toward the distant jet that would take them to Japan. Jun had just celebrated her birthday, and she had wanted to go and visit Tokyo. And Ren couldn't say no to his sister. Travel from their home in China to the En Inn—where Ren was dead-set against staying at overnight after that one time HoroHoro farted repeatedly in his sleep, even though the Ainu was going to be busy in Hokkaido at present—would take a couple of days, which would give Ren plenty of enough time to come up with the best strategy to defeating Yoh in battle.

()()()()()()

At that moment, Manta had just gotten out of cram school. He stretched his short arms as he walked out of the front door and onto the sidewalk, breathing in the fresh air (well, as fresh as air could be in a busy city such as Tokyo) through his nose. He checked his watch, recalling that he'd promised to go over to the inn to hang out with Yoh—though he was sure that Anna would make them do something terrible, like cleaning. He felt it was worth it, though, to be able to hang out with Yoh and Ryu and the spirits, not to mention Tamao and…well, Anna could be enjoyable sometimes.

For old time's sake, Manta decided to walk through the cemetery to take a shortcut to Yoh's house. He climbed over the gate, doing his best not to fall flat onto his butt, and placed his feet onto the ground. He didn't have to hurry, so he took his time as he walked through the graveyard and when he ascended the stairs to the shrine.

_It's pretty peaceful up here,_ he noted to himself when he reached the top and looked around at the scenery. Despite the creepiness of the place (something that he still hadn't completely gotten over), it was quiet, aside from the chatter of the resident spirits.

"Oh, Manta-dono!" a familiar voice called, and Amidamaru appeared out of thin air before the small teenager. Said boy gave a start, but was quickly able to shake off the feeling after knowing of Amidamaru and other spirits for nigh on three years.

"What're you doing here, Amidamaru?" Manta asked, curious. During the Shaman Fight, the samurai spirit had hardly left Yoh's side at all. It felt…_wrong_ for him to be seen without Yoh.

Amidamaru seemed to straighten up in importance. "Yoh-dono said it was important that I took a look around the nearby cemeteries to make sure no spirits were causing harm or needed help."

Manta nodded. "A shaman's number one job is to help the spirits and people nearby," he said, recalling the early days with Yoh, when the shaman had helped the spirit of the sign painter and helped save those kids from a fire. "See anything?" he asked conversationally, beginning to walk toward the other set of stairs that led down to the opposite end of the graveyard.

Amidamaru floated along beside him. "The resident ghosts here don't have too many problems, but they do say a female spirit has been wandering around lately and seems a bit restless. I haven't seen her myself, but they gave me a bit a description. I need to report to Yoh-dono, lest that spirit somehow become fixated and starts to wreak havoc on the people around her."

Manta looked up from concentrating on the stairs below his feet. "I hope she doesn't become fixated," he said with a shudder, remembering how he had almost been flattened by the billboard that the sign-painter ghost had possessed.

"Hopefully we will be able to find her before that happens," Amidamaru replied as they reached the bottom of the stairs. Together, the two exited the graveyard and headed to the En Inn.

()()()()()()

Yoh was getting the groceries when he nearly tripped over Manta.

The tiny boy skittered out of the shaman's way. "Yoh-kun! I thought you'd be at the house."

Yoh regained his footing—he had almost fallen flat on his face—and stood up straight. "Hi, Manta. Hey, Amidamaru," he greeted. He held up his grocery bags; he didn't have to verbally explain what he was doing for the other two to go "oooooh."

"Anyway," he went on as they all turned to go to down the sidewalk back toward the inn, "what's up?"

Manta shrugged. "Not much with me. But Amidamaru—"

"Yoh-dono," the samurai interrupted, coming forward and pointing at a spot a bit of the way down the street. Yoh, who'd been paying attention to Manta, picked up the aura of another spirit, and followed Amidamaru's guidance with his eyes to see a flicker of movement among the crowded street.

"What is it?" Manta asked, craning his head to try to see where the other two were looking.

"The spirits in the cemetery described a wandering spirit to me," Amidamaru said. "It looks like her. Manta-dono and I were wondering if she might become fixated, as she seems to be restless."

Yoh couldn't really the spirit from the distance; the best he could pick up was her black hair, and the colors silver and blue in what she wore. As politely as he could, he began to push through the people, though he didn't break into anything faster than a brisk walk. Manta hurried after him on his short legs, while Amidamaru just passed through the people in his way. Realizing that he might not catch up to the spirit girl before she slipped away, Yoh asked Amidamaru to go on ahead, and the samurai quickly morphed into his spirit-ball form and sped away.

When Yoh and Manta finally caught up to Amidamaru, they found themselves on a less-crowded sidewalk, as it led out into the lesser-visited area of Funbari, where the En Inn was. Amidamaru was still in his spirit-ball form, staring tensely at the spirit-ball form of the female ghost; her overall aura was bluish, and her long dark hair was topped by a silver hair band. She looked to be about Yoh's and Manta's age, or a little older, at the point when she had died. Her eyes, which were violet, were narrowed in tense unease as she gazed back at Amidamaru.

Yoh smiled at the spirit. "Konnichiwa," he greeted cheerily and friendlily. "I'm Yoh—this is Amidamaru, and Manta," he introduced, nodding at the others in turn. When the spirit didn't say anything and only looked at him warily, he continued, "Don't worry; I'm a shaman. Do you need help?"

The immediate reaction took Yoh a bit by surprise. The spirit's eyes widened, her expression seeming to both brighten and tighten in excitement at the same time. In a swirl of silvery-blue, she formed into her regular form: that of a young woman wearing a blue kimono with the pattern of silver flowers. The odd thing was that Yoh recognized her as Chinese, and he wondered why she would be wearing a Japanese garment.

"Shaman, you said?" The girl's Japanese, while fluent, lacked any sort of contractions. "You would help me?"

Yoh nodded. "That's what I do."

"I am looking for someone," she said then, almost speaking over the last part of his sentence.

Manta blinked in surprise at her hurried tone. "Who?"

She became flustered in her excitement for a second. "I do not know his name. I am not sure if I have ever even seen him before." She wrung her hands, as if she was anxiously trying to find the right words. "The way he was described to me… He wore a yellow jacket, and…" She vaguely began gesturing in a triangular form above her head. "His hair…was…spiky?"

Understanding dawned in the male trio's eyes, and simultaneously they all said, "Oh, you mean Tao Ren."

The girl looked at them in confusion, her violet eyes scrunched up. "Tao…Lian?" she asked, her voice taking on even more of her Chinese accent as she actually said the name.

Yoh nodded. "We call him Ren. He's actually a good friend of ours. I mean, there can't be that many people who have that kind of spike in their hair," he pointed out with a chuckle.

Manta agreed with a laugh as well. "No, not many." He turned back to the spirit. "Why do you ask?"

The girl took the slightest second to respond. "I heard that he would be able to help me."

"Help you with what?" Yoh asked. "I'm able to help you. What do you need?"

She fidgeted slightly. "I need to find him."

Yoh couldn't say that he wasn't a bit unnerved at her assertions that she really needed to find Ren. What could Ren possibly help this girl with? Something suddenly occurred to him, but it must have occurred to Manta at the same time, because the short boy spoke up.

"You never told us your name," he pointed out to the girl. He suddenly seemed to become embarrassed. "I mean—you don't have to tell us, if you don't want to," he said quickly.

She paused and looked at him; something flashed in her eyes, something Yoh couldn't read. "Ming Yue," she said finally. She didn't elaborate on what her family name might have been. She looked back to Yoh. "Do you know where I could find this...Tao Lian?"

Yoh nodded. "He's actually going to come by my house in a couple of days and stay in Tokyo for a while with his sister. You can come by my house around then and I can introduce him to you if you want."

She seemed to consider his words for a moment. "I would like to see him as soon as possible," she admitted. "Would it be acceptable if I waited at your house? I would not interfere with you."

Yoh knew that Anna might not like if he just accepted Ming Yue's question. However, there was no way that he would turn down her request for help. "Of course you can."

Ming Yue talked little on the way to the En Inn; Yoh got the feeling that she was lost in thought. Manta and Amidamaru tried talking to her, but they soon gave up, and Yoh didn't even try to make conversation.

When they finally arrived at the En Inn, Anna met them by whipping open the front sliding door. Her eyes were immediately on Ming Yue. "Picked up a wandering spirit?" she asked Yoh, studying the ghost girl's appearance.

"She says she needs help—from Ren," Yoh explained, trying not to be nervous even though he knew that Anna wouldn't just be cruel to Ming Yue for no reason. "I was thinking that we could let her stay here until Ren comes to visit in a few days."

Ming Yue bowed to Anna. "If you would not mind, miss, I would like to stay here to wait for him. I would not get in your way. If it would please you, I would stay outside or where I could not be seen or get in your way."

Anna stared at her for a moment with half-lidded eyes. "Why do you want to see Ren?" she asked.

"I heard he could help me," Ming Yue answered simply.

"With what?" Anna asked in a deadpan tone. Ming Yue opened her mouth to speak; however, nothing came out for a few seconds, and Anna shrugged and said, "Whatever. Just don't get in my way, and leave this place as soon as possible. I don't like annoyances."

Ming Yue nodded, and Yoh couldn't help but note that her eyes seemed to be relieved. "Would you like for me to stay in a certain place?"

"Outside, out of the way, but I suppose it doesn't matter as the house is haunted anyway," Anna said before turning around and heading back further into the house.

And without any other prompting, Ming Yue turned and headed to the side of the yard beside the fence, and faced the entrance gate.

Yoh, Manta, and Amidamaru exchanged a look, but none of them knew what to do, so they followed after Anna, each one feeling rather awkward about Ming Yue's determination, and each one of them wondered, _What could Ren possibly do for her?_

For days, Yoh never once saw Ming Yue move from that spot beside the fence. She hardly seemed to move at all; since she wasn't tangible, the wind didn't stir her hair, so she looked to be just a colorful, semi-transparent statue. She also rarely said anything if one of them walked in and out of the house, nor did she even seem to acknowledge Ponchi and Conchi when they harassed her—although for some reason they did stop bugging her rather abruptly.

All Ming Yue did was stare at the entrance gate, an unreadable expression on her face.

()()()()()

Ren watched with his cat-like eyes as the workers—as kyonshii were too noticeable out and about in daylight—took his and Jun's luggage off the private jet. He himself only carried his sword, which was concealed underneath his blazer, at his hip just above his shorts; he went nowhere without it.

"Oh, Lian, be more happy," Jun chided as Pailong went to pick up a couple of her bags. "You should smile—we're going to see Yoh and everyone after we put our things in the hotel."

Ren rolled his eyes. "Jun, I'm thinking," he explained before turning away from the jet and heading for the limo. Jun followed him after a moment, as did Pailong; the workers put their luggage in the trunk. Before long, the driver started the limo and drove out of the jetport and headed toward Tokyo.

Ren crossed his legs and stared out the window. He, of course, was contemplating whether or not he should challenge Yoh as soon as he saw him. He was definitely leaning toward actually doing so, though he remembered how he had failed to kill Yoh after he had struck him with lightning. His hand tightened into a fist, and he knew that there was no way he could let that happen again if he was going to win.

After they had dropped off their belongings at their hotel, Ren, Jun, and Pailong had their driver take them to the En Inn. Upon arrival, the trio got out of the car and instructed the driver not to wait for them, and they headed toward the entrance gate.

A moment before they reached it, Ren's determined thoughts were interrupted by his sixth sense: an unfamiliar spirit was in the area. Jun stopped walking for a moment, too, and the two exchanged a look of confusion. _Yoh didn't say anything about a new spirit, _Ren thought as he continued walking toward the gate. Though he wasn't afraid or anything of the unexpected presence, he was surprised and curious.

The first thing Ren saw when he walked onto the property was Yoh, Manta, and Amidamaru waiting on the front steps; exactly where Yoh had sat when he and Ren had talked the night of their draw.

Just as he was about to point at Yoh and confidently declare a challenge, his field of vision was taken up by a face, and a large pair of violet eyes.

"_Tao Lian,_" the spirit girl said importantly in Mandarin—though with the slightest of tremors in her voice, "_you need to help me find my killer._"

**Part Two**

**~Three Years Ago~**

A girl sat in the uncomfortable waiting room chair. Worry was apparent in her facial expression, body language, everything about her. Her hands were clasped together before her mouth, and her violet eyes stared blankly at the wall. Several other families were in the room as well, but she was alone.

A few minutes later, a young man hurried into the room. Though he was only a year or two older than the girl, his anxious face was tired from a long workday. Shoving his windblown hair out of his eyes, he looked around until his eyes landed on the young woman, and he hurried to her side.

"Mi-" he began, cutting himself off when she turned to him, tears in her eyes.

"Yuichi," she gasped, flinging her arms around him. Her breathing became uneven and full of wet sobs.

He wrapped his arms around her shoulders. "…How is she?" he whispered into her hair.

The girl managed to control her breathing enough to speak. "She…it doesn't look good…. Her arm and chest were hit most…she hit her head…burns..."

Anything else she said became incomprehensible once more. Yuichi patted her head, knowing that any words he said to her to calm her down could be a lie. There was little doubt that the one they were waiting for would not come out of this alive.

()()()()()()()

**~Present Day~**

Ren stared at the spirit in front of him, perplexed by her sudden request. "_Who are you?_" he asked suspiciously, responding to her in Mandarin. Having been surprised by her sudden appearance, he had backed down out of his overconfident stance, though his stature was still tall as he looked at her.

An unreadable expression flashed across her face, and though Ren did not miss it he had no idea what it meant. "_Xian Ming Yue_," she replied, and once again a small look flashed across her face; he thought he could recognize a bit of...panic. "_I need your help finding my killer_," she repeated, her voice strong and insistent.

Ren raised an eyebrow and then shook his head. "_I'm afraid I'm busy at the moment_," he told her stiffly, making to move around her.

"Lian!" Jun scolded, joining in the conversation with Mandarin; her tone caused even Ming Yue, who had been staring determinedly at Ren, to look up at her. "_Don't just ignore her!_"

"Um...what are you guys talking about?" Manta called out. He had stood up, as had Yoh. "What did you say, Ming Yue?"

The spirit girl ignored him and continued speaking in rapid Mandarin. "_I've heard of you. You're Chinese_," she stated. She paused, as if realizing that she had stated the obvious and was embarrassed by it, then said strongly, "_Spirits I talked to said that you were near where it happened_."

Before Ren could respond, Yoh called, "Oi, don't you guys think you could speak Japanese?" He was sweat-dropping. "I don't understand what's going on..."

Ren let out a breath of anger. "Yoh," he said, switching back to Japanese. He gestured toward Ming Yue. "Why do you have a stray spirit in the yard?" He said "stray spirit" almost as if he had said "stray dog."

Ming Yue bristled. "_Don't speak about me that way_!" she snapped at him.

Yoh stared at Ming Yue; he was surprised, and not just because she had spoken in Mandarin. "I didn't know you were this…excitable," he said, unable to come up with a better word.

Ren crossed his arms. "So you did know. Why didn't you try to help her?"

Yoh looked at Ren indignantly. "I did! She said she wanted to find you—she didn't know your name, but when she described you I knew it was you." He grinned. "I mean, who else has hair like you?"

Ren's tongari twitched slightly. "I don't know why I even came here," he mumbled quietly to himself. His whole battle-ready mood had left him thanks to the distraction by the spirit girl.

Ming Yue turned to Yoh in irritation. She spoke in Japanese, and though her undertone was impatient, it was far different from hearing her speak in Mandarin. "Is there any way you can get him to help me?"

Ren scowled. "Don't talk as if I'm not here. And I never said I wouldn't, but it's not like I have the time."

Yoh frowned. "C'mon, Ren, it's our job as shamans to help spirits pass on."

The sound of footsteps announced Anna's arrival; she opened the front door and leaned against the doorframe. Her cold eyes studied the scene. "You might as well do it, Tao," she said. "She's been here for days. She's starting to annoy me, being there all the time."

Ming Yue suddenly became impatient, and she rushed up to Ren and used her levitation to loom over him. "_I need your help_," she insisted in rapid, urgent Mandarin.

Ren was a little unsettled at having his personal space invaded, but he shrugged. "_When I have the time_," he replied loudly to her, annoyed, before turning toward Yoh. "But first-"

"No," Anna commanded.

Both boys blinked in surprise and looked at her. She huffed.

"Honestly, Tao. All you want to do is fight. But not here, where you could destroy my inn."

Ren leered at her, but he didn't dare say anything against her. Even he was hesitant to challenge Anna. "Fine, then. We can always go somewhere else to fight."

Yoh looked confused. "Who said we were fighting?"

Ren's tongari shot up, and he pointed accusingly at Yoh. "Why _else _do you think I'd come here?"

"I don't know." Yoh blinked. "To have a good time and hang out?"

Ren's mouth hung open uselessly. Ming Yue opened her own mouth to speak, but before anything could happen, Anna snapped.

"You know what, Tao? Yoh'll battle you once you've helped her—I will _not _allow it otherwise." She huffed and crossed her arms. "I'm tired of this," she finished before heading back inside.

"A-Anna..." Yoh stared after her before casting an apologetic glance at Ren and hurrying inside after his fiancée.

Ren stared at the spot where Yoh had disappeared inside. He had no idea what had just happened, aside from the fact that his plan had just been shot and ground down into the dirt. After a couple of seconds of incredulous speechlessness, he spun on his heel and stalked away, meaning to leave through the entrance gate.

"Lian!" Jun called, now concerned. "_Where are you going?_"

"_I'll meet up with you later,_" he answered without looking back. He left the property and headed in a random direction, which ended up being away from the main city. At the moment, aside from Bason, he wanted to be away from everything and everyone; he was fuming.

"Would you_ stop_ following me?" he asked Ming Yue after a couple of minutes of silence on both of their ends. He didn't even turn to look at her, and he kept walking, entering a small band of woods.

She gave a slight noise of surprise, as if she was startled by his sudden address to her. "Not until you help me," she insisted. "I'm not going to stop."

Ren stopped short, his already tense muscles tightening. "Stop."

"No."

Ren whipped around. "I'll help you later," he snapped. "Leave me alone."

Ming Yue shook her head vehemently. "I heard what she said: you can't battle Yoh until you help me. And I'm not leaving you until you do."

The determination in her violet eyes was steely, and her words were tense; Ren paused as he noticed this. She sounded as if she were trying to say something without saying it.

A sudden bout of overwhelming anger and impatience took hold of Ren, and he pulled out his sword and flicked it so that it extended to its full length before he hurled it at a tree. Its tip embedded into the wood; the sword was so sharp, and Ren had thrown it with such strength, that it had nearly went through the entirety of the thick trunk.

_The only reason I came here with Jun was to win against Yoh, _he thought violently. His fists shook at his sides, and the sudden soreness of his throat betrayed the fact that he had just yelled without realizing that he had done so. _And as soon as I get here, he pisses me off as always, and Anna fucking forbids me to do anything, and on top of those things, this—this _girl-

He broke off in his thoughts, realizing how stupid and childish he was sounding to himself. Despite how much he wanted to defeat Yoh, it was impossible for anyone to stay angry at the lazy boy forever—although Ren was often annoyed by him. And Ren was a shaman—he was _supposed _to help spirits that needed him. Just because he wasn't getting what he wanted didn't mean that he was in the right to act this way.

Although his logic still didn't _completely _calm him down, he let out a breath and managed to subdue his emotions. He walked over to the tree and pulled his sword out of it before he shortened it once again and slipped it into its holder. And finally, he turned to Ming Yue, who was looking at him with wide eyes. He recognized the fear and alarm in her eyes and scolded himself silently. He couldn't believe that he had been unable to control his own feelings.

"...I apologize," he said, crossing his arms and leaning his back against the trunk of the tree. "I'll help you."

Ming Yue stared at him for a moment. Very quickly, her eyes narrowed determinedly once more. "Help me find my killer," she repeated from earlier.

Ren sighed tiredly. "Revenge?"

The oddest range of expressions crossed her face for a brief second, but then she nodded. "Yes. But most of all, I want to know _why_."

Ren's hand tightened around his arm. He once again wished that he had become Shaman King: there would be no hatred if he had gotten his way. "You know revenge doesn't do a whole lot of good?" he pointed out. "It's hard to know who you are if you let hatred define you."

By the look on her face, Ren guessed that this thought had never crossed her mind. She thought for a moment. "I still want to find him. That's all I've been able to think about for years."

Bason appeared beside his master. "Are you sure you've considered Bocchama's words?"

Ming Yue seemed a tad surprised at the other spirit's sudden appearance, but she nodded without a word.

Ren knew that there was little he could do to change her mind, so he decided to just go along with what she wanted. "When and where were you killed?"

"I was killed three years ago," she replied, and then went on to describe the name of a bakery that had been near the corner of two streets in one of the less-busy sections of the city.

Ren nodded; he had a pretty good idea of the location, though he wasn't entirely sure how to get there due to his unfamiliar sense of the area compared to his own home. "Could you lead me there?"

Ming Yue nodded and pointed out of the woods the way they had come. "I think just walking would take us almost an hour to get there, though..."

Ren didn't really care. He stood up fully and motioned for Ming Yue to lead the way.

()()()()()

"Anna, you know you need to-" Yoh began, but his fiancée cut him off.

"Shut up, Yoh," she snapped. She continued to munch on her rice cakes and stared at the television.

"But it's bad for the-" He broke off when Anna sent him a glare. Scared for his life, he backed out of the room and nervously hurried to the kitchen.

"What's up with Anna-san?" Manta asked when he walked into the room.

Yoh fought against the heat that rose in his cheeks and the bubble of happiness in his belly at the thought of his and Anna's secret. "She's just being Anna," he answered. He looked to Jun, who was drinking tea while sitting beside Tamao and Pailong. "Jun, how are you?" he asked, not having had the opportunity to greet her earlier during all the commotion.

"I'm fine," she replied. She rubbed her thumb along the edge of her cup. "I'm a bit worried about Lian, though," she admitted.

"Ren can take care of himself," Yoh replied.

Manta nodded. "I wouldn't worry, Jun-san." He paused. "Maybe he's helping Ming Yue-san... What did she want him to do?" he asked.

Jun looked troubled. "She said she wanted him to help her find her killer. She said he was in the area when it happened."

Pailong frowned. "Why was she killed, though?"

No one had an answer.

()()()()()

Ren was hit with a sense of déjà vu—not entirely surprising, really, as Ming Yue had said that other spirits had seen him in this area before when she had been killed three years ago—when he stepped up to the edge of the crosswalk. He wasn't quite sure, however, if he could remember what he had been doing here or how long ago he had last come here. He looked to Ming Yue. "Where did it happen?"

He noted that a certain tenseness had come to Ming Yue, and he could understand why. Plenty of spirits haunted the place where they had died or been buried or where their ashes or monuments were placed; however, who was to say that they enjoyed it?

She looked around slowly at the crowd of people around them as she took in their surroundings. Then, she slowly pointed to the corner just across the street that was to their left, and without warning she started floating in that direction. Ren was a little annoyed, and he had to wait for the light to change before he could cross with a bunch of random strangers who were heading in the same direction.

When he finally caught up with her, she was still, staring at the sign above a store door. Ren took a glance up to see that it read, _"SHIGERU'S PRINTING,_" before he turned his attention back to Ming Yue.

"Didn't you say this was a bakery?" he asked.

She stared at it for a moment longer before shaking her head as if to clear it. "It would make sense that it's been changed," she muttered, looking down at the ground.

Ren was confused. "Why's that?"

Ming Yue opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She was still facing the ground.

Something occurred to Ren, and he wondered why he had never brought up the point before. "How did you die, Ming Yue?" He knew she had been killed by someone, but that was the extent of his knowledge.

At this, her face grew red with emotion and her shoulders shook. She held her hands up in front of her mouth and shook her head, still not looking at him or anything else for that matter. Ghostly tears began to spill from her eyes, gaining enough emotional form to splatter onto the ground.

If anything made Ren uncomfortable, it was a girl crying. "M-Ming Yue, I can't help you if you don't tell me," he explained, taking a small step closer. He had no idea what to do.

She shook her head in a short, jerky movement. After a couple of moments, she found her voice. "C-can I...find you tomorrow...?"

Through his discomfort, Ren felt a flash of irritation; he wanted to get this whole deal done and over with as quickly as possible. But even though he really wanted to push Ming Yue through this emotional hurdle due to his impatience, something about her expression caused him to hesitate.

And just when he was about to open his mouth and prompt her to speak, she disappeared from sight. Ren was taken aback, and he whipped his head around to try to find her, but she was gone.

()()()()()

Incredibly beyond frustrated, Ren went back to his hotel and went straight to the private weight room to try to blow off some steam. As he trained, he glared at nothing, and tried unsuccessfully to subdue his thoughts. Thanks to Ming Yue ditching him, he had had to find his way back to the hotel by himself—which admittedly wasn't that hard to do—and besides that, he was plain irritated by everything that had happened that day. He had just finished travelling on top of it all.

It took him a long time, but eventually he became exhausted, both physically and mentally. He trudged to his bathroom and took a shower, letting the hot water warm his muscles. Afterwards, when he had lazily dried off, he slipped on a pair of boxers and slid into his bed. Exhausted as he was, it took him a few minutes to begin to drift off.

"Don't wake me, Bason," he muttered before closing his eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

**January 2, 2012**: The second day of my celebration of Ren's birthday is here. 8D I made him cake and sang to him and put it on Tumblr 8D

He'd better love it~

But anyway, you guys! D: I have to take the moment to complain here. Only one review last chapter. One! D: It's been a while since I've gotten reviews, and I have to say that it doesn't help my inspiration much... *milks the sad act for as long as possible*

So, yeah. Here we are with the second chapter! Tomorrow's chapter is the last one, unfortunately. Hope you enjoy~!

**Chapter Two**

**Part One**

**~Three Years...and One Week Ago~**

The two of them sat on the small bank that overlooked the river; they were hiding underneath the bridge. She was blushing heatedly as he nuzzled and kissed her neck.

"D-Daisuke," she insisted, somehow both incredibly happy and also uncomfortable. "C-can we stop? Someone might see us..."

He quieted her with a passionate kiss on the lips. "Don't worry about it," he told her when he finally pulled his face away from hers, just enough to give them both room to breathe. His hand, which was at the small of her waist, slowly began to move downward.

She grabbed his wrist before he could make that big a move. "Daisuke," she repeated, nervousness entering her voice. She knew exactly what he wanted, but she had never given it to anyone before, or even anything that was relatively related to her...area. Her sister had already gone that far with Yuichi, but she herself...she couldn't give that much of herself…

Daisuke let out a breath, and she knew he was exasperated with her. "Come on," he said, pulling her even closer to him. "You'll like it."

She flushed. "I-I know," she stammered. "I-I just-" She broke off when he put his hand on her jaw and ran his fingers through her long, dark hair.

"But I love you," he told her.

She had never heard those words from him before, and her entire body seemed to tingle with happiness. She had never heard those words from _anyone _in the sort of way he had said it. Her heart thumped in her chest. She opened her mouth, almost about to either say "yes" or "I love you too," but she hesitated, finding herself just short of willing to say those things.

Lately, she had found herself unwilling to say a lot of things to anyone, but that was beside the point.

He waited for a small amount of time before he sighed again and said, "You know what? We'll do this in a week. My parents are out of town then. And you," he continued, pulling a strand of her hair toward his face, "can wear...a kimono."

She balked. "But...I am _Chinese_," she said dumbly.

He leaned in towards her ear. "Exactly. But you would look prettier in it than anyone."

She turned her thoughts over in her head before she finally nodded, in such a manner as if she were a small child.

()()()()()

**~Present Day~**

When morning came around and Ren finally began to be pulled out of his slumber, he had the out-of-character thought to just stay there in his bed, at least for a little while. He didn't want to remember the things that had made him irritable yesterday.

He had almost drifted back to sleep when he realized that the aura of the room was off.

Instantly awake and in battle mode, he sat straight up, his body coming into contact with the cool air outside of his bed sheets. He began to grope underneath his pillow for where he had stashed his sword, but he stopped in surprise when he saw the reason for his rude awakening.

He looked to Bason, who had popped into sight beside him. "Why didn't you wake me up when she came?" he snapped, still running off adrenaline.

Bason sweat-dropped. "You told me not to wake you up..."

The glare Bason received could have rivaled even a certain itako's worst looks.

"What are you doing here, Ming Yue?" Ren asked irritably, pushing his bed-hair out of his eyes.

It was a second before he noticed that her semi-transparent face was a shade of red, and it took him another second that he was sitting up in bed, wearing nothing but his boxers. And then it was his turn to flush.

"C-can you get out of here while I change?" he demanded, slightly flustered.

Ming Yue nodded hurriedly before moving through the window.

Ren sat for a moment before swinging his feet out of the bed and standing up, heading over to the dresser. He put on his clothes—pants and a shirt—before he finally paused and let out a breath. "How long was she there for?"

"About an hour, Bocchama," Bason admitted. "But I wasn't going to let her do anything!" he added hurriedly.

Ren, exasperated, went to the bathroom and came out a few minutes later. He stood uncertainly in the middle of the room for a moment. "Ming Yue?" he said, feeling extremely stupid when there wasn't any sort of reply.

"I think...she might be outside," Bason said, motioning his small spirit-ball form toward the window.

Ren grumbled to himself as he slid open the window—despite this being the penthouse suite, the window was a tad hard to open, almost as if no one had ever had a reason to open it before and so it was therefore sticky. He stuck his head out the window—he had no qualms about the height, especially after being dropped out of the sky by the Patch—and looked around. He realized pretty quickly that it was drizzling lightly. "Ming Yue?"

It was only a couple of seconds later that she materialized a few feet in front of him. "...Good morning...Lian," she greeted with a small nod. Ren thought that she looked distracted.

Ren had a feeling that today, like yesterday, was not going to be good. He decided to push the thought aside, though. He crossed his arms. "Do you want to tell me something?" he asked meaningfully.

She fidgeted with her hands. "Can I show you some places today?" she asked.

He paused. "Can't you just tell me what the hell happened to you?" he asked impatiently.

"I will once I show you those places, I promise," she insisted. "Please?"

He huffed. "I'll think about it over breakfast," he grumbled as he slid the window shut. As he walked away from it toward his door, Ming Yue floated through the glass.

"That wasn't very nice," she pointed out, her voice having changed from hesitant to biting.

His tongari twitched. "Can't you leave me alone for five minutes?" he snapped.

He turned in time to see her open her mouth as if she was about to retort, but she closed her mouth with a tight-lipped frown and disappeared from view.

"Damn it," Ren muttered.

()()()()()

Later that morning, Ren followed Ming Yue down a suburb street. He was dressed in his black coat and yellow scarf to protect himself against the autumn chill and the rainy fog that pervaded the whole city, blocking out the sight of the taller skyscrapers with its greyish-white expanse. The tiny raindrops pricked at the skin on his face, and sometimes he had to squint to see Ming Yue if she got too far ahead of him.

"Where are we going?" he asked her for the third time that hour. She had taken him on a roundabout course through Tokyo, in which they had ended up in this small, cramped suburb.

"It's not too far from here," she insisted; to him, her voice sounded restrained, vibrating with a barely-suppressed energy. Ren noticed her controlled excitement, and to say he was suspicious was an understatement. He was always on the alert, but he had no idea what kind of threat Ming Yue could pose to him—and he rather doubted that she was able to do anything to him, as she was just a human ghost.

After a few minutes, she suddenly stopped and pointed at one of the houses. It was plain and small, a normal Japanese suburb house, and there didn't seem to be anything special about it. But the way Ming Yue stared at it, Ren had the feeling that it contained something both wonderful and...sad, something that was impossible for her to have.

"I was heading to Daisuke's house that day," she told him. "He graduated and doesn't live there anymore. I have no idea where he went."

Ren didn't know what to say. Part of him wanted to walk away, for he certainly did _not_ want to listen to a sob-story about the man that Ming Yue had wanted but couldn't have. But on the other hand, something about her expression rooted him to the spot.

Ming Yue clutched onto the lower part of her kimono, balling her hands into fists around the fabric as she stared at the house. "I...I was wearing this because he wanted me too. For the first time, he and I were going to..." She trailed off and looked away.

Ren's face went red at her implied meaning. He looked away as well. After a moment, he looked back up to find that he couldn't see her anymore. "Ming Yue?" he called quietly, taking a few steps along the road.

"This way," she said, and he finally caught sight of her through the grey mist. Stuffing his hands further into his pockets, he walked after her and hunched his shoulders to keep his scarf around his neck. As he followed her, some of the rain from high in the sky condensed into thicker droplets and splattered onto Ren and his surroundings.

_Why is she showing me this? _he wondered, not for the first time.

Eventually, they emerged from the suburb and came to a flat bridge that spanned two banks and a river between them. On the other side were the blurred edges of the continuation of the community, but Ming Yue's and Ren's immediate surroundings were clear of everything but oxygen and rain.

Ming Yue pointed downward. "We were underneath this bridge when he told me he loved me. This bridge was where he first kissed me, too. And down there," she said, pointing downriver, "is the school where we went with my sister and her boyfriend. Her boyfriend worked some, too."

He could hear the longing in her voice, and he thought of Jun. "What about your sister?"

"...She studies at the university here," was all Ming Yue elaborated. She started floating across the bridge, just as the rain started to strengthen and begin to pour out of the sky.

Ren hissed in disgust at the cold and quickened his pace so that he could cross the bridge and find shelter. Even his resolute tongari was beginning to be frayed by the downpour, and he was beginning to get soaked. Before he could get too far, he slowed to a stop.

Bason materialized in his spirit ball form beside him and motioned behind them. "Bocchama..."

Ren knew—Ming Yue's aura hadn't moved. Still irked that his hair was steadily getting soaked, Ren half-turned around to see that Ming Yue had not moved an inch from her spot since the rain had started to come down hard. She floated above the pavement of the bridge, one of her hands held out in front of her as if she were holding something delicate, but that was impossible...

When Ren figured out what she was doing, he could only stare at her.

Ming Yue looked longingly at her transparent hand; the raindrops fell straight through her fingertips. "I used to hate the rain," she admitted softly; he could hardly hear her over the sound of the water splashing onto the ground. She closed her hand into a fist as if she could clutch onto the rain. "I hated getting wet."

Ren stood there, letting his bangs stick to his face; his tongari was beginning to fray even more because of the weather. There was no need for her to explain, because he understood. He had been dead before, but the Iron Maiden had revived him. Ming Yue didn't have that luxury.

Without quite consciously knowing what he was doing, Ren slowly but purposefully walked up to her. She only rose her eyes up to meet his. He extended his hand to her.

He felt slightly stupid and embarrassed, but he asked, "Do you want to feel the rain again?" His voice was slightly quieter than normal, but it was hard to hear over the rain.

Ming Yue stared at him.

Ren scowled slightly, feeling his cheeks heating. "I'm not going to be able to help you if you don't tell me what exactly it is that you want, because it seems that you want to procrastinate from finding your killer. We might as well try this."

She hesitated, and some emotion passed through her expression. "I've never..." She didn't need to verbally finish her sentence for him to know that she had never shared the body of a shaman.

Ren, already a bit irritated at himself, grew impatient. "Well? You want my help, don't you? Don't you trust me, at least?"

He didn't miss the determination that grew in her eyes. He gave her quick instructions, and resolutely, she converted into her spirit ball form and nestled into the palm of his hand. Ren hadn't handled too many spirits other than Bason and Spirit of Thunder and some of the spirits at the Tao Manor, but her aura was entirely feminine and quiet, though there was a bursting excitement about her. She seemed only barely able to contain herself. Ren himself felt nervous for once in his life; why did this seem so personal?

Swallowing his apprehension, he pushed her into his chest. The familiar sensation of breathlessness overtook him for a short second, but before the feeling faded, he felt as if he had been suddenly punched in the gut. Having been caught off-guard, he staggered backward a couple of steps and gasped for air.

"What...?" he managed to say before his vision flickered for a second.

"Bocchama!" Bason exclaimed, appearing worriedly in front of him.

Ren grit his teeth as scenes began to overtake him. For a moment, instead of standing there in the rain, he was transported back to the day when he had first come to Tokyo and met…Manta, of all people. He saw himself splitting that speeding truck in half. He saw the explosion it caused—but he himself had not been standing at that angle to it... And he was blown back by it, but that had never happened to him... Other things flashed very quickly: seeing a nametag with both Chinese and Japanese characters on it; watching someone sit in a chair and cry; watching someone walk away; and finally, searching for what felt like forever...for him.

As suddenly as the images had come, they stopped. A tense silence occurred for a moment before Ming Yue withdrew from his body. From across the span of a few feet, she, on the verge of tears, glared at him.

Ren stared at her. Utter horror had settled like a cold grip around his heart.

_He _had killed her.

_She _had brought him all through this to show him what he had truly done to her, to make him feel guilty.

It had worked.

"...Why are you telling me this now?" he managed.

"_You killed me_!" Ming Yue exploded. "You took _everything _from me!"

Ren opened his mouth to respond, but he hesitated. How could he make up for what he'd done? Ming Yue was long dead. "...I was a different person then," he said. He felt horrified with himself. _How could I have killed someone without knowing I did?_

She stared quietly at him before exploding into frenzy. Rage twisted the expression on her face with a mixture of pain and sadness and suffering...

"Well?" she yelled. "What are you going to do about this?"

Ren was still encased in a state of self-horror. He couldn't believe this. It was almost too much. He thought he had gotten over his past, but now it had been shoved right back into his face. "What can I do?" he asked, only barely able to hear his own voice over the rain. He repeated himself, loudly this time, and added, "You're long dead!"

She grasped her head as if she had an excruciating headache. "Feel guilty! Repent!" she screeched. She began to shake. "_D-die_!"

He didn't know how to reply. But luckily—or unluckily—she gave one last scream at him before disappearing. The silence that followed, which was broken only by the rain, felt too quiet.

Finally, Ren turned and began to walk the way Ming Yue had been leading him. The images she had shown him kept flashing in his mind; they were so powerful that he forgot about how even his bones could feel the chill of the rain.

He wasn't that surprised when he eventually found himself at the intersection where had split the speeding truck in half that had ended up killing Ming Yue. He looked, but all the physical damage had been erased. The bakery had obviously been renovated and bought out by whoever owned the print shop.

When he stood silent at the corner for a long while, Bason floated concernedly beside him. "Bocchama...?"

Ren shrugged and began to walk down the sidewalk. "I did what she asked. I was the killer she wanted to find. It's time to do what I want to do."

**Part Two**

**~Three Years Ago~**

The girl held her sister's bandaged, cold hand. Aside from the scars and burns and the shorn hair of the one on the bed, the conscious one remembered how much they looked alike. Long, dark hair...deep, dark violet eyes...

"How could this have happened?" she murmured, her voice hoarse from crying.

Yuichi stood beside her as she sat in the one chair. He had no idea of what to do. He didn't know if there was anything he could do.

The young woman shook her head. "Where was she going?" she whispered. She looked to the package of clothes that the nurse had put on the bedside table; it contained the kimono that the young woman's sister had been wearing.

_Why was she even wearing that? _the young woman wondered. _Why wear a kimono when we aren't Japanese?_

"Why are you _here_?" she asked as she squeezed her sister's hand, her voice breaking on the last syllable.

()()()()()

**~Present Day~**

Thankfully, it appeared that Jun and Pailong had gone out somewhere for lunch, which left Ren alone, aside for Bason, when he got back to the penthouse. When he got to his room he stripped quickly out of his soaking clothes and hurried into the shower to warm up. It took a long time for the feeling to return to his toes and the rest of his body, but when he was finally finished he turned off the water and hurried to his dresser, hardly caring to do a good job of drying himself off because he knew that there was no way to escape the rain outside anyways.

He quickly procured a set of clothes from his dresser and put them on before finding another coat—one that wasn't soaked completely through—and put it on over his clothes. Unfortunately, he didn't have another scarf to protect his neck, but he decided that that wasn't necessary. He then made sure that his sword was at his side and that he also had a collapsible Kwan Dao stowed in his jacket, and then left the hotel as quickly as he could.

()()()()()

The rain had let up to a drizzle by the time he got to the Inn. The ground everywhere was muddy and wet; there was no exception to this. As Ren approached the house, he pulled out his sword and extended it before oversouling with Bason. And then, Ren simply waited; he didn't need to call out, as he knew that his furyoku would be picked up well enough by the shamans in the house.

Sure enough, not two minutes later, the door opened and Yoh poked his head out. "Ren?" He took in the sight before him and didn't even question why Ren was battle-ready. Instead, Yoh said, "I take it you helped Ming Yue."

Ren nodded stiffly. "She found her killer." He unbuttoned his coat and pulled it off, letting it fall to the muddy ground and revealing his battle outfit. He made note of where his coat fell, lest he need his Kwan Dao at some point, which he doubted.

Yoh took a look at the rain and looked a little uncomfortable at the thought of fighting in the downpour, but nevertheless he withdrew into the house for a second to grab his katana and the antiquity. As he calmly oversouled, Anna and Manta filled the front doorway, as did Jun and Pailong, who must have come to visit again.

Ren cast aside his thoughts and immediately launched himself at Yoh. He couldn't afford to lose focus now; he had to kill Yoh in order to win, there was no other way around it.

He made to slash at Yoh, but the carefree shaman—looking at least somewhat serious, for once—parried the blow. The two fought as if they were in a sword-fight, only on a much larger scale. They ducked, parried, and blocked each other, neither truly able to gain any ground on the other. Ren grew incredibly frustrated, both with himself in this battle and himself _outside _this battle. Thoughts kept distracting him, and he found himself wishing, now more than ever, that Ming Yue had never come looking for him. He hated the fact that he couldn't stop thinking about that and wasn't able to focus on the current battle.

There was a sudden, brief reprieve when Ren jumped back to avoid a blow and Yoh didn't lunge at him. Instead, the lazy boy looked at him and said, "You seem a bit distracted, Ren."

That sentence itself was enough to burst the dam that Ren had put up around the anger at himself that had built up even since yesterday. In a fit of anger, he focused his furyoku into making lightning and shot the energy at Yoh.

If Yoh hadn't blocked it with his oversoul, the lightning would have probably ended up lighting up the house in flames. The lightning had been so wild and uncontrolled that Ren suddenly had no doubt that he could have killed everyone nearby in the blast.

Disgusted with himself, Ren let go of the furyoku controlling his oversoul and stored his sword back at his side before he whipped around and stalked off the property, although he remember to grab his soaking coat up off the ground. He didn't put it on, however, as it was wet. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he was risking catching a cold, but at the moment he could not care less.

"Lian!" Jun called after him concernedly, but he just shook his head at nothing and kept walking.

Ren came to a conclusion quickly despite his anger as he walked back to the hotel. He wasn't quite sure how, but he had to find Ming Yue again and somehow help her pass on—not just because of what he'd done to her, but also because he was a shaman...though his reasoning was mostly based on the former thought. Surely the only way to get things back to normal would be to do the right thing.

However, Ren wasn't sure of how he would be able to find Ming Yue quickly. He could ask Anna to use her itako powers to find her, but he shot down that idea immediately: Anna probably wouldn't do it, and besides, his pride wouldn't allow him to ask...especially after his complete failure just now. He supposed that he could look around the print shop or at the bridge, but something made him hesitate about doing that. The images that Ming Yue had put in his head—whether intentionally or not—kept flashing in his mind, and he had the feeling that there was more to the situation than he had originally thought.

The strongest images that had been left in his mind were of the crying person and the person walking away, but the most intriguing one to him was the sign of the nametag, the one with a person's name written on it in both Japanese and Mandarin. No matter how hard he thought about it, the sight of it was blurry in his mind...although it seemed _familiar _somehow. He was sure that he would be able to recognize it if he saw it, but he had no idea what it said.

Why would Ming Yue remember a _nametag _of all things, anyway? He was pretty sure that the tag had been mounted on a wall and not on someone's shirt... Maybe it read "Daisuke," but he got the feeling that it wasn't that...

Unable to make much headway in his thoughts, he made it back to the hotel and changed once again into dry clothes, this time into more normal clothes rather than his battle outfit. He then debated with himself on what to do next. He supposed starting at the print shop would be a good start. The sooner he started, the better, if only to keep his mind off of his earlier failure against Yoh...

The rain had finally completely tapered off by the time he'd gotten to the print shop, and more people were out and about. He figured that it must be an hour to two after lunch, and he realized that he hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. He looked around and saw a small restaurant down the street and decided to take a small detour to eat; Ming Yue didn't seem to be in the area anyways.

While he ate, he watched the people go by outside the window (and otherwise ignored the stares from the girls in the restaurant). He studied the faces, as if each living person could possibly be Ming Yue—which of course wasn't possible. He took the time to look at the surrounding buildings as well...and that was when he saw it.

The hospital, down the street at the corner on the opposite side.

Could the nametag...could it be in the hospital and have the name of a patient on it, someone Ming Yue cared about? Ren remembered her reluctance to talk about her sister...

He paid for his food and quickly exited the restaurant to make his way down the street to the crosswalk that led to the hospital. He took a moment to stare at the tall, rectangular building before he crossed the street and entered through the visitor's entrance.

Acting like he knew what he was doing, he took a look at the directory and saw that the floors available to visit were two through five. He took a second to note that the atrium he had entered into had a staircase on the right leading to the next floor, while the elevators were a little bit to his left down the hallway extending to the opposite end of the hospital. Underneath the staircase was the front desk, and across from that was the security desk.

"Bason," he whispered as he walked toward the staircase; the Chinese spirit appeared at his shoulder in his spirit ball form. "Start from the fifth floor and work your way down. Remember: it's a nametag with Chinese and Japanese characters." Obediently, Bason floated upwards.

He headed up the staircase confidently, and the security guards only seemed to glance at him—not that he cared, he could incapacitate them easily if it came to it. He continued up to the next level, where there was a cafeteria to his left and a set of doors leading to patients' rooms; there were a few people sitting in the cafeteria, but there was no one in the hallway, so he quietly slipped through the doors and walked down the new hallway.

There were definitely nametags on the walls outside the doors, and they even reminded him strongly of the image Ming Yue had implanted in his mind, but none of the names clicked for him—and none of them also had the name in Mandarin as well.

As he turned around to head back out into the main hallway and to go up to the next floor, he came face-to-face with a nurse.

"Can I help you?" she asked. She seemed to be a kind woman in her forties, with lines in her face, and her voice was polite but forever tinged with a certain sadness that must come from working in a place with so much sickness and death.

Thinking quickly, Ren spoke in Mandarin. _"I'm looking for a friend."_

The woman's eyebrows immediately went up. "I'm...sorry?"

"I do not speak Japanese," Ren lied slowly, taking extra care to enunciate his words. He hated resorting to this—he felt incredibly stupid to be stooping this low for something that possibly couldn't help him.

The woman frowned. "I believe we have one or two Chinese patients here. Are you looking for one of them?"

Ren took a moment to pretend to process her words and then nodded.

The woman looked rather relieved to have made a bit of headway in the whole "language-barrier" department. "I don't remember the names because of how many patients we have, even if you told me, but I do remember the rooms. I could lead you to them if you'd like. Are you family?"

Once again, Ren took a moment to nod. "_Cousin_." He thought for a moment before repeating the word in Japanese.

The woman nodded and led him back out of the hallway of patients' rooms and then to the elevator; she almost hit the button for the third floor before she hesitated and then pressed the fourth floor button. Ren noted this but said nothing and followed her to one of the rooms. The nametag _did _have Japanese and Chinese characters on it that read "Mao Tan." Ren knew at once that this was not who he was looking for. He shook his head at the nurse, and he was sure that he saw the sadness in her eyes.

"Well, then," she said, leading him back to the elevator and pressing the button for the third floor. At this point, Bason returned and whispered to him that there was a nametag on the third floor, but Ren didn't respond to him as he didn't want to arouse suspicion in the woman.

"...I hope you're not looking for Xian-san," the nurse finally said quietly a moment before the elevator door opened and she stepped out into the hallway.

Ren couldn't help but raise his eyebrows at the nurse's words; however, she hadn't been looking at him as she spoke, and she continued to lead him down the hallway. He noted that the nurse had said earlier that should couldn't remember the names of the patients, but Xian was Ming Yue's last name. _So this must be Ming Yue's sister or another relative_, he thought to himself, though he thought it more likely to be her sister, as they approached a door at the end of the hallway. He noticed a nametag beside the door.

It read "Xian Lian," and Ren recognized it from Ming Yue's thought and not just because "Lian" was his name as well.

He nodded to the nurse, and she dipped her head in turn. "I'll leave you be," she said. "Xian-san hasn't woken up in years...," she muttered as she turned and left.

Ren raised an eyebrow. Lian was in a coma? So that was probably why Ming Yue had thought of her, and was so secretive about her. Ren highly doubted that he would shout it to the world if Jun was ever in Lian's situation.

As he grasped the doorknob and slowly opened the door, he wondered if Ming Yue ever came by to visit her sister, and if he had a chance of seeing her if he did this.

The room was set up to that it was initially rectangular, but the bathroom just beside the door turned it into an irregular hexagon. The room was rather bare, aside from a small television in the corner and a small table beneath the far window that contained a small-but-wide vase that had only one flower in it—a white lotus. Fitting, he supposed, as "lian" did mean "lotus."

The single bed was faced toward the window, its back end toward the door. It was tucked into the space between the window and the outer wall of the bathroom. Ren could see a dark-haired, silent figure lying in it, but he couldn't see the person's face... Except...he could see the person's right arm, or rather, the lack of it below the middle of the upper arm.

Ren stood there for a moment, startled; how could _that_ have happened? He closed the door softly behind him and walked slowly toward the bed. However, before he could take too many steps, the door was opened and a young woman's voice asked him, "What are you doing in here?"

Taken by surprise, Ren turned around and recognized the girl. "Ming Yue?"

Even as he finished saying the word, though, he realized that he was wrong—this was not Ming Yue. For one, the young woman was alive. Another fact was that, while her hair was long and she did look incredibly like Ming Yue, she was several years older than he was, and he was the same rough age Ming Yue had been when she had died. This young woman looked to be about eighteen or nineteen, perhaps twenty at the most.

She was the person who had been crying in the memory.

In response to his words, the girl stiffened, her violet eyes growing suspicious. "How do you know my name?"

Ren blinked. "Are you...Xian Ming Yue?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Yes. But who are you?"


	3. Chapter 3

**January 3, 2011: **At last, the chapter you've all been waiting for! Well, this is the end of my present for Ren's birthday. Oh well. Time to start thinking of something for next year.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Three<strong>

**Part one**

**~Twelve Years Ago~**

The two sisters giggled as they slid down the slide of the playground. Their dark hair glinted in the sun, and their violet eyes reflected the light. Laughter escaped from the throats of other children as well, but the sisters were only aware of themselves.

"Lian!" the elder sister called, beginning to scale the small ladder that led to the upper structure of the playground equipment. "Come on!"

"Wait up!" Lian pleaded, hurrying to climb up after her sister.

"Hurry, or I'll leave you behind!"

"Ming Yue," Lian complained, only half-teasing; she was having fun, but she was becoming tired and didn't want to run so much anymore. "Slow down!"

Ming Yue didn't slow down that much, and went down the slide first; by the time Lian even started down it, Ming Yue was at the bottom and Lian couldn't see her. Lian quickly descended back down to the earth and looked around for her sister, calling out her name once or twice.

"Lian, over here!" Ming Yue called, and Lian turned to see that her sister had entered the small copse of trees that helped to complete the setting of the park. Lian quickly ran after her sister—as quickly as her seven-year-old legs would allow—and she entered the copse as well.

"Ming Yue," Lian complained. "Don't run away from me!"

Ming Yue looked back at her sister. "You silly," she scolded. "It's not like I'm going to really leave you behind."

"Don't leave me, though," Lian said, catching up and taking hold of Ming Yue's hand. "Don't ever leave me."

Ming Yue smiled. "Why would I leave you? And you wouldn't leave me, would you?"

Lian shook her head, her dark hair bouncing around her shoulders. "Never! You're my sister!"

Ming Yue held out her pinky. "Twin promise?"

Lian eagerly linked her pinky with her twin's. "Twin promise."

_I want to be with you forever. I never want to be alone. _

**~Present Day~**

"I'm Tao Ren," Ren replied, speaking Mandarin now—and taking the special precaution to clearly pronounce "Lian," on the off-chance it might influence the girl that he was on her side. "I'm here because I'm looking for your sister."

Ming Yue—Ren actually had trouble thinking of this young woman having that name even though she looked incredibly like the ghost he knew—still looked suspicious of him. She had seemed momentarily surprised at the fact that his name was the same as her sister's, but she seemed to get over it very quickly. She replied back in perfect Mandarin. "Why? Lian's been in a coma for three years."

Ren shook his head. "No—not Lian. Your other sister—the one that died. I'm able to see spirits, you see," he said, cutting right to the chase. "Your sister told me that her name was Xian Ming Yue, which can't be right, and I'm trying to find out more about her in order to help her pass on."

Ming Yue stared at him like he was insane, but he couldn't help but notice the look that came into her eyes, the sad but hopeful look. "I only have one sister." She pointed to the comatose girl on the bed. "She's all I have, and she's not dead. ...Not like that." She shook her head. "You...need to get out of here. I'll call security if you don't."

_She's not dead? Not at all? Just comatose...? I suppose that's possible... Weirder things have happened..._

Ren was utterly confused and was trying to sort everything out in his head. "Wait," he said, running a hand through his bangs as he thought. "I know you don't believe me, but it's true. I don't know how I can prove it to you..."

He tried to come up with a way to prove himself, but he couldn't stop wondering why Ming—_Lian _had lied to him. Well, of course there was the reasoning that she had lied to him because he had been the one who had killed her...but he hadn't _really _killed her, if what Ming Yue said was true and the ghost he knew was actually the comatose, one-armed girl on the bed.

_She probably said her name was Ming Yue after she found out my name, _he realized. _She heard it and had to think fast, which would explain keeping her last name and using her sister's... She probably didn't want to identify with her killer in any way._

Ming Yue was silent for a moment. She took a small but determined step toward him. "You can prove it to me if you can find me the bastard that did this to her. They say it was a freak accident. There was no way it was."

Ren's thought process was broken by this statement, and he couldn't help but stare at the older girl for a heartbeat. Then he looked away for a second before deciding that he really needed to look her in the eyes. "I'm responsible. That's why I need to fix things."

Ming Yue's violet eyes widened before they narrowed and blurred with tears that were both angry and depressed. "You...! You're ly..." She trailed off and looked straight at him before bowing her head and putting her hands to her face. "...You're not lying," she said, sounding on the verge of sobs.

"I'm not," Ren agreed, taking the opportunity to look away from the crying girl. He looked toward the bed; he still couldn't see Lian's face quite clearly, but her hair was shoulder-length—definitely shorter than the hair of the girl he knew. Her skin was pale. Her lack of arm seemed to silently scream at him, and he knew that he was responsible for that, too.

"...I'm going to do everything I can to change this," he said quietly.

He didn't have any idea if he was going to say more, but he didn't get the chance to; Ming Yue gained enough composure to smack him across the face. Ren didn't protest or say anything. He let his cheek sting in the silence.

"...Why did you do it?" Ming Yue whispered hoarsely.

Ren felt shameful. "I was a different person then. I became responsible for a lot of things. I have to make up for them while I can."

Ming Yue looked to Lian; her wet eyes became longing. "I'd been losing touch with her... We promised to be together forever. We're...twins."

To be honest, this new information didn't really surprise Ren, as the girls looked so much alike. He looked to Lian, whose face he still couldn't see from the angle he stood at. "My sister is able to revive people," he informed Ming Yue. "We're shamans. I'm not sure how exactly she'd do it with a comatose person... I should probably find Lian's spirit before we do anything, just in case... Do—"

A ringing sound interrupted him. Ming Yue dug her hand into her purse. "Thought I muted it," she muttered, pulling out her phone. She wiped at her eyes while looking at the screen. She answered the call and switched languages to Japanese. "Yuichi? What—"

Ren could hear the voice of the man on the other end of the line. "Are you all right, Ming Yue?"

Ming Yue pulled the phone a few inches away from her ear. "Yes I am. What do you mean? What happened?" She listened for a moment; Ren couldn't make out the words from Yuichi, but Ming Yue suddenly ducked past him and hurried to turn on the small TV in the corner. Startled by her actions, Ren turned and followed her for a couple of steps before he stopped to watch as she clicked through the channels. She stopped on the news. Ren had seen worse things, but even he could see that this was terrible.

A bus had crashed into several cars and had overturned onto its side. There was broken glass and smoke everywhere, and the scene was roped off by police officers. There were several ambulances around the place. The headline at the bottom of the screen stated that the accident had occurred not too far from the hospital.

"...and for apparently no reason," the newscaster was saying, "two of the tires of the bus completely fell off the bus while it was turning, which authorities say seems to be one of the causes of the accident. Witnesses say that first the front tire completely shot off, as if being pushed by an explosion, and then the same happened to the rear tire..."

Utter horror settled upon Ren. "It's her," he said.

Ming Yue stiffened and looked back at him, her violet eyes wide. It wasn't until the voice coming from her phone turned louder and insistent that she turned her attention back to her conversation.

"Yuichi, I'm here at the hospital. I'm fine. I'll talk to you later, okay? ...Yes, love you too. Bye," she finished before hanging up. She stared at her phone as if it were alien. Without looking at Ren, she asked, "...How is it her?"

Adrenaline was starting to flow through Ren's veins. He had to do something soon, and quickly, but he knew Ming Yue needed an explanation. "She was really angry when I last saw her. She might be fixated now—unable to stop dwelling on her anger. If a spirit has enough emotion, it has enough power to interact with the real world, though only in small bursts."

"Lian wouldn't hurt anybody!" Ming Yue argued heatedly, turning around fully to glower at Ren. "_You're _the one that's hurt people! You've brought this whole thing down on us!" She shook her head wildly, her hair flying. "Why am I _believing _you when you say you'll help...?"

"Because I will," Ren snapped, silencing Ming Yue. Angered and annoyed, he turned away from her. Almost unconsciously, he took a couple of steps toward Lian's comatose form. And then he could finally see her fully.

Her face was as pale as the rest of her skin, a result from the lack of sunlight; her dark lashes were stark against her skin. There were several pale, thin scars along her cheeks, chin, and forehead, scars that had faded with time. However, her face showed neither happiness nor anger. Her face was completely and utterly blank. She showed no emotion whatsoever.

"I came here because she accidentally shared a few memories with me," he told Ming Yue, glancing back at the young woman. He nodded toward the door. "One was of the nameplate, the other of you crying, and the last is of someone walking away. Do you know who that was? It might help."

Ming Yue's mouth was hanging open in a distraught expression. She shook her head after a few moments. "...I have no clue. What did he look like?"

Ren shook his head as well. "I'm not sure," he said before turning back to Lian for a moment and taking in her pale form, her lack of arm.

_I'll stop this._

"I'll be back as soon as I can," he said, hurrying out the door. Ming Yue didn't make any move to stop him.

()()()()()

"Where do you think she would be, Bocchama?" Bason asked as Ren rushed down the sidewalk.

"If she's fixated, she's probably in the general area," Ren said as he dodged a strolling couple. His golden eyes constantly flickered back and forth, looking for abnormal movement.

_Then again, _he thought to himself, _she's not a true spirit if her body's still alive... She could be fixated, or she could be something rather different..._

The traffic clogging the street was so bad that it wasn't until he made it to the corner where the print shop was that he finally saw the whole of the accident. The intersection was roped off; firefighters and policemen were still attempting to rescue people out of several cars. Reporters and cameramen flocked at the outskirts of the scene while several people on stretches were carried into ambulances.

Ren searched with his eyes, looking both up to the sky and down to the ground, for signs of Lian. He could feel a spiritual presence nearby, but he couldn't see her...

Without warning, a spirit materialized in front of him. It wasn't Lian, but actually a man who appeared to be around forty, with brown hair and eyes.

"She went that way," the spirit said, pointing down the street that led to the bridge and the crowded suburbs. To the place where Lian had revealed how she had died.

Ren nodded to the spirit—there was no time for any words—and ducked around the corner and ran down the sidewalk for about a block before a sudden, loud pop stopped him in his tracks: the sound of breaking glass. A couple of people near him screamed in surprise, and several people looked up to inspect the streetlamp that was about half a block away from where Ren stood. However hard other people might have looked at the streetlamp, only Ren could see what—who—had caused the light bulb to explode.

Lian was perched on top of the streetlamp. Her anger and hate had morphed her form into a silvery-blue blue of what looked like flames, similar in a way to when Bason was in his spirit ball form, except more visually ominous. Her long, black hair flapped every which way as if caught in a wind. Her violet eyes glowed with a fierce violence as her taloned hands gripped the streetlamp.

She looked like a tiger or some other sort of animal that had been set on fire.

Ren wasn't sure why, but Lian didn't seem to notice him. She leapt like a cat to the next streetlamp, causing its light bulb to break as well. She continued this action again and again, with the same results, travelling down the street while the people below began to become panicked.

Ren rushed through the small throngs of people. He had to catch up to her, he had to stop her. _She's my responsibility._

When he lost sight of her, a burst of panic coursed through his veins, and he increased his speed even further. The buildings around him began to become smaller, and the street became just about devoid of people as it narrowed its width. He kept running, and stopped when he came to the bridge.

He had had little doubt that Lian would be here, and he was right: she was there on the middle of the bridge, crouched like a cat waiting to pounce. She was utterly still, apart from the slow, ominous rippling of her hair and of her soul itself.

Ren, through his slightly heavy breaths, managed to yell out toward her. "_Stop, Lian_."

She stiffened, her flame-like bits of soul flaring out like an animal's fur. She stalked forward a couple of paces. "Don't...call me that...," she said, her voice sounding faraway and almost muffled, although that didn't hide the anger in her voice. "...That's _your _name," she spat.

Ren didn't need any other confirmation to know that his hunch about why Lian had lied about her name had been right. He tried to make his posture as relaxed as he could. "Lian," he said insistently, "we can change this. You're not really dead. My sister is able to revive people. All we have to do is bring you and her to your body and she'll take care of the rest."

The faraway tone disappeared from her voice, and although she still sounded muffled, her words became faster. "Why the _fuck _would I want to go back to _that_?"

Without any other warning, she leapt all the way from the middle of the bridge to him. Ren only had just enough time to pull out his sword and to unite it with Bason in order to protect himself before she swiped at him with her taloned fingers. Ren kept his oversoul extremely basic, just a thin layer of furyoku around his blade, so as not to somehow harm Lian or make her even more furious.

She jumped and swiped at him several times, but each time he was able to easily block the attack—her power was hardly a fraction of his, plus she was untrained and angry. Ren recalled how easy it had been for Yoh to nearly defeat him in their preliminary match; much like what had happened then, Lian's anger was making her lose what little battle skill she had.

"Let me help you fix this," Ren said after he blocked yet another blow.

Lian's whole body seemed to flare up. "You _killed _me! You _kept _me from...from..." Instead of completing her sentence, she lashed out at him again, only to be blocked and deflected once more.

"From _what_, Lian?" he asked in frustration. "Tell me! I'm trying to help you! You can still live!" He shook his head in irritation. "Why won't you fucking tell me?"

"_Die_!" she screeched, rushing headlong toward him. He managed to duck out of the way, out of her reach.

Ren finally had had enough of this—he was learning nothing and going nowhere with the conversation. He let go of his furyoku and angrily shortened his sword to put it away beneath his coat while Bason levitated nervously behind his shoulder.

Ren lowered his arms so that his palms were beside his hips, facing outward. "I'm not going to defend myself. I'm not going to attack you. If you want, take your revenge on me right here and now. I'm not leaving you alone until we come up with a solution. It doesn't have to be you coming back to your body, if that's what you really want. But I need to fix this."

Lian stared at him, her form frozen. For a moment, despite her ominous appearance, Ren saw that she looked as vulnerable as a scared child...and if he wasn't wrong, a flash of hope went through her glowing violet eyes.

But then she rushed at him.

Like Ren had promised, he didn't try to defend himself—he didn't even try that trick that Yoh had used against the Icemen to negate their furyoku so that he wouldn't have to take the hit. Ren staggered back a few steps from the impact of Lian's form passing through his body. He felt icy cold from the rush of her feelings, and his soul felt pinched and small.

And, at least he was pretty sure, the final piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

He would have turned around to face her, but she had already doubled back around him and was now a few feet in front of him, looking smaller and less frightening than before—she looked more human, more scared. And he met her timid violet eyes with his astute golden ones.

"Daisuke was the one who was walking away from you in that memory," he said.

He knew he was right when Lian shrunk back a few inches.

"He kept visiting you while you were comatose, but you couldn't talk to him. And eventually he left and never came back, right?" Ren said, quieter now but still speaking in such a way that his voice was like a piercing arrow.

Lian's form lost all of its animalistic, ominous attributes, and she appeared in her normal spirit form, only she looked far more timid than he had ever seen her. But then she shook her head furiously. "Don't talk about him," she snapped, though weakly.

"Because you hate him now, right?" Ren asked. Lian opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, and it didn't seem like she was, Ren continued. "He made you feel _alone_. And you're mad at your sister, too, because she left you alone all the time before you died."

Lian looked to be on the verge of tears. "S-shut up...!"

Ren shook his head. "You're not angry at me for killing you. You're angry because you couldn't keep yourself from feeling lonely. You were going to Daisuke that day because you thought you wouldn't feel lonely anymore. You're—"

"_I don't hate my sister_!" she yelled. Ghostly tears were streaming down her face. "I hate him. But I don't hate my sister. I don't hate Ming Yue. ...I'm still mad at her, but I couldn't ever..."

Ren's unwavering gaze never left Lian. "You're like I was. You hate yourself. Because you can't stop feeling lonely, and you can't stop yourself from hating yourself."

Lian shook her head furiously. "I-I'm not like you!" she yelled before shrinking into her spirit ball form and dashing over the edge of the bridge in order to get away from him.

Ren was _not _going to let her get away again. Without a second thought, he jumped up onto the railing and used that to push off and grab Lian before she could get away. And as he fell toward the river below, he integrated with her.

The fall wasn't that far, and the river was deeper than he had originally thought, so his body only just bumped slightly painfully against the bottom of the riverbed before he managed to break the surface of the water and get air back into his lungs. He easily swam to the shore, the water getting shallower by the second. He knelt down on the grass directly underneath the bridge.

"We are a bit alike, Lian," he muttered as he got his breath back.

He pretended that the wetness on his face was from the river and not from Lian's tears.

**Part Two**

**~Three Years Ago~**

_Why was I so lonely?_

That was Lian's first thought after she died.

She regained consciousness in a far different way than normal. She remembered the accident. She had a good idea that she was dead. But she didn't feel panicked or nervous. Instead, she felt rather...fresh, and she wasn't tired like she normally was when she would wake up in the morning.

The question weighed heavily on her mind, however. She had had no real friends in her life—the last true friends she had had were back in China before she and Ming Yue had moved to Japan to study. Her parents had also still been in China—they were in Japan now, to look after her body there because they were too afraid to move her to a hospital back home. Ming Yue had been spending more and more time with Yuichi over the past year. And the only person to make an effort to hang out with her was Daisuke...but even with him she still felt alone, as if he just wanted _her _and not her..._personality _she guessed was the right word.

_But that's why I was going to him, _she thought. _Because he was going to be mine and I was going to be his. I wouldn't be alone anymore._

Not that she had ever gotten the chance.

Lian remembered the stories about ghosts that stayed around on earth—that the reason they didn't move on was because they had something left to finish. When she had first..."woken up," she had assumed that it was because of her loneliness. But since she had found that her body was merely comatose and not _dead_, she had begun to doubt.

Not really knowing what else to do, she hung around her body and watched doctors and nurses and visitors go by. She watched Ming Yue cry, and an almost guilty sense of satisfaction swept through her. _This is what you get when you don't pay attention to me, _she thought, finding herself mad at the fact that Ming Yue had just about left her alone for a year.

Lian felt a little odd, though, whenever she looked at her body or at the name-tag on the wall outside. It was just...weird that she was in this situation. She was a spirit, but she wasn't really dead. It was all very surreal, but at the same time undeniably real. Did this happen to all comatose people? Was she far more dead than alive, or vice versa? She had no answer.

For about two or three months, she stayed in the hospital. And every few days, her attitude brightened when Daisuke visited. His outward visage was more shocked than distraught, but she supposed that was just how he dealt with the stress.

But every time he visited, more and more days passed in-between his visits. Lian had nearly decided that he would never return...when he walked in through the door.

Ecstatic, she made to go over and hug him, but the reason she stopped wasn't just because he realized that it was impossible for her to do so. It was his face: his passive expression as he looked at her body before turning away and leaving the room.

She knew it. He wasn't going to come back. He wasn't going to ever come back.

It was her fault. It was all her fault that she was alone. She deserved this. She hated herself. She screwed up in her life and that's why she felt so lonely and terrible and why she was being left.

This was what she told herself, anyway.

She didn't want to admit to it, though. She didn't want to push hate upon herself, although she hadn't known that that had become an impossible for her. There had to be someone else responsible.

And so she set out.

**~Present Day~**

_At least she hadn't killed anyone_, was all Ren could think when he woke up a couple of days later.

He went to take a shower and otherwise get ready for the day before he went to the suite kitchen to have breakfast. It wasn't that long before Jun and Pailong came into the kitchen as well.

"When are we heading over?" Jun asked her brother as she went over to the fridge.

Ren paused from eating his breakfast. "They told me to come around one," he said brusquely, putting a stress on the word "me" in such a way that he knew Jun would understand.

She looked troubled, but then she nodded. "Call me if you need me."

()()()()()

Ren felt restless, so he decided to go for a walk until he had to be anywhere. Almost unbidden, his feet took him to the printing shop on the corner where Lian had been in the accident...not that it was really an accident. _A mistake_, he corrected mentally.

It hadn't really sunk into him until then how he had inadvertently caused something he hadn't before cared about to change. A shop on a corner and a girl's life had been insignificant things to him three years ago, but at the moment they took up a lot of his thoughts. It wasn't a _huge _life-changing experience, not like meeting Yoh had been, but he felt that it wasn't unimportant.

"I heard about the girl."

Ren wasn't surprised at the voice—he'd felt the spiritual presence a moment before. He turned his head to look at the spirit of the man beside him, the one that had directed him yesterday on where to find Lian. To be honest, this was the first time that Ren had thought about this spirit since he had first seen him yesterday.

The man gave him a nod and continued, "It was a good thing you did for her."

Ren blinked his golden eyes. "Who are you?"

The man shook his head. "Names aren't important. I only owned this shop before the accident," he said, leaning his weightless form on the wall of the building.

"I killed you." There was no doubt in Ren's voice, but also no sound of anything else. It was a simple statement of fact.

The man nodded. "I'll tell you this, though: I'm not in a coma. No turning back for me."

Ren couldn't really understand the man's almost jovial attitude, but he didn't question it. "...What do you want?" he asked finally.

The man shook his head again. "Nothing. I don't need your help to move on. Not anymore, at least."

Ren scrunched his eyebrows together in confusion, and the man continued. "I only want two things," he said. "I want to see my daughter get married, and that's actually going to happen in the spring. And second, I died trying to protect that girl, so I at least wanted to see her be helped further, and especially to live."

For some reason, Ren just had to smirk—he found this darkly amusing. "At least your daughter's getting married."

The man suddenly became rather stern. "Young man, you are a nuisance. Shut up." This stunned Ren into silence. "Of course you helped that girl. No matter what you may think, you did help her."

Ren scowled a little. "I don't understand what happened. Jun tried to help her and everything. But she..."

The man shrugged. "Perhaps it's because her soul wasn't in her body for so long, but that's not a question I have the answer to. I guess you'll have to find that answer yourself."

()()()()()

Ren hadn't stayed to talk to the spirit-man any longer. There was still time before he had to be anywhere, so he took a detour through a city park. Each day it was getting a little colder, and it was the middle of a workday and a school day, so there was hardly anyone in the park at all. For some reason he didn't understand, he saw a lot of cats slinking around in the bushes.

That is, Ren thought he was alone until a presence that was absolutely unable to be ignored pervaded the area.

The wind blew, and it brought a voice to Ren's ears. "I'd ask you what you were doing in Tokyo, Ren, but such questions like that would only waste the short time you'll have in that flesh. Especially when I know everything."

Ren stopped short and spun around to see none other than Hao leaning against a short tree. God's arms were casually crossed, his hair—which was longer than ever—streaming down all around him. He seemed to have traded his trademark poncho and pants for a red kimono.

The Shaman King was the last person that Ren had expected to see, and to say that he was surprised was an understatement. Though Ren still didn't like Hao, there was nothing he could do about him, since he was God. So, Ren only scowled. "What are you doing here?"

Hao shrugged. "I was just going to check up on my brother, and I thought I'd come visit you for a moment or two, since I know what's been going on with you."

Ren scowled. "Leave me alone," he said before turning and walking away.

"Oh, Ren," he heard before there was another gust of wind and Hao was in front of him again. Ren noticed that a lot of cats had gathered nearby, too, especially around Hao's ankles. And given the proximity of the two boys standing near each other (certainly not because Ren wanted to), Ren would probably trip over all the cats if he tried to walk away again. On an even worse note, the cats meowed nonstop.

Ren thought then that Hao was truly an evil God.

Hao tsked. "Such thoughts could be bad for you, Ren," he warned almost playfully.

"I can think whatever the fuck I want," Ren snapped.

Hao rolled his eyes. "Anyway, I thought you might like to have someone to talk to. Helping comatose spirits can be a...trying experience. I've helped a couple of them before in my day. You think they'll live, and oftentimes nowadays they do because of modern technology, but it isn't always the case and in the past there were a high percentage of them truly dying. Even if a shaman could help get a spirit back into their comatose body... It's pretty hard thing to succeed in doing this, you know."

Ren scowled again. "I've never heard of comatose spirits."

"Well, normally they don't go asking around for help," Hao said. "Most understand that their bodies need to recuperate. No matter where the spirit is, once its body is close to waking, the spirit is sucked back to its body. Therefore—"

"Lian's going to wake up soon," Ren finished. "Since we put her back in her body."

"Relatively, if at all," Hao replied. Ren didn't say anything, and Hao continued. "However, comatose spirits don't remember their time as spirits once they go back to their bodies."

Ren paused, not really knowing what he felt about that.

"Every once in a while she might feel some sort of déjà vu," Hao offered. "Other than that, she won't recognize you at all if she wakes up, not until she dies."

_So only I'll remember what happened_, Ren thought to himself—and to Hao, but he honestly didn't feel like giving a shit about God just then.

"So," Hao went on, "you never had Jun give her back her arm. Or wake her up, for that matter."

Ren bristled. "Jun tried. Something wasn't—" Understanding dawned upon Ren. "You're such a fucking bastard," he snapped, reaching out to punch Hao, but the Shaman King teleported back a few feet, and the cats hurried after him, giving Ren room to move.

"Why did you do that?" Ren growled. "She doesn't deserve to not have her arm. And she has to wake up."

"She doesn't deserve to be in the hospital in the first place," Hao replied calmly.

"She needs her arm," Ren said, refusing to let Hao bait him. "She needs to wake up."

"The thing is, Ren," God said, picking up a cat and scratching it behind the ears. "If you and Jun give her back her arm, too much commotion is going to be made at that hospital. It could negatively affect shamans—too much attention and fear, you see. But if _I _give her back her arm, I can modify the memories of those who've seen her, so that it'll be as if she never lost it in the first place. Your choice, Ren."

"What about her waking up?"

Hao absent-mindedly played with the paws of the cat. "She'll wake up eventually. I may be a miracle worker, being God and all, but I don't go performing miracles left and right. I'll give her her arm back, but she'll wake up on her own—or not—in due time. But I'll leave it up to you whether she should have her arm back."

It was a question of pride, Ren knew. Ren wanted to take responsibility for his own actions and to heal Lian by his own means. Ren, being Ren, did not want to ask for help or let anyone help him, especially Hao. However...

"Yes," Hao agreed. "I _do _have a point."

Ren glowered at him. "...Fine. Do it."

Hao smirked and made a show of snapping his fingers. A soft glow surrounded his hand before the light flew off with yet another gust of wind. Hao disappeared as quickly as if he had never been there in the first place, and the cats meowed plaintively before scattering.

Ren scowled. He wished that he hadn't had to resort to that. It was a smart deal, he knew, for him to take on Lian's behalf. His own pride was rather bruised, though, and he had no idea what Hao would want in return—for Hao would undoubtedly ask for something in return. He hoped it wouldn't be something terrible.

Ren, ready to just leave this place and go anywhere else, turned around and came face-to-face with Hao again—it was a big surprise, because Hao had masked his own aura and Ren hadn't sensed him anymore.

Hao smirked in such a way that Ren had to hold back a shiver, because it was rather disturbing for him. "Don't forget what you all promised me, Ren. And for the record, I'll get something in return. You'll find out what it is soon enough. Don't worry...too much."

And then, Hao left in the blink of an eye.

But of course, as all shamans knew, God was always everywhere.

"Bastard," Ren muttered.

()()()()()

Ming Yue opened the door to Lian's hospital room when he knocked. She ushered him inside with a small smile of welcome.

"Mom and Dad are out at lunch," she said quietly. Despite the fact that Lian was comatose and not really asleep, she acted as if she was afraid of waking up her sister. "They should be back within a half-hour, though."

Ren nodded and looked to Lian, making note that her arm was whole and unscathed. And Ming Yue wasn't making any sort of big deal about it, which meant that she didn't remember at all that it had been amputated after the explosion. Hao had kept his promise.

"I'm not quite sure if this will work very well," he said. He would actually have rather had Jun be here with him, but he knew it was futile for her to try to heal Lian again if Hao was interfering.

"That's fine," Ming Yue replied, although he knew that she was lying, at least just a bit. "Anything could help her."

Ren nodded again and walked over to Lian's still form. He thought that there might be more color in her cheeks, but it might have been a trick of the light.

He held his hand a few inches over where her heart should be and focused on _pushing _a portion of furyoku into her. He made sure not to give her too much—she was a normal human, not a shaman capable of truly manipulating furyoku, and he had no idea what would happen if she had too much of it to handle. He gave her enough to hopefully strengthen her body so that she might wake up faster...or at all.

When he was finished, Ren took a step back. He looked at Lian's face for a moment, as if he expected her to open her eyes at any second, but she didn't.

He turned to Ming Yue and pulled a small card out of his pocket. "If there's anything at all, call this number... Especially if she wakes up."

Ming Yue accepted the card and nodded. She looked away awkwardly for a moment before looking back to him. "Are you really...?"

"Yes," Ren replied. He stalled for time by looking at the time on his phone. "...If you need help immediately, look for the En Inn—for Asakura Yoh and Kyoyama Anna. They should help you."

Ming Yue nodded once more. She finally seemed to let out a breath that she had been holding for a while. "Thank you," she said quietly, sincerely.

Ren didn't verbally or physically acknowledge the thanks. "I have to get going now." He bowed his head slightly in a polite goodbye before—

"You can't just go _now_...!" Ming Yue said suddenly, and Ren turned back to her in surprise. "If you were right, then Lian was—is—lonely. And you helped her, so...so when she wakes up, if she sees you...she won't feel lonely."

A part of Ren wished that there was something more he could do, but he shook his head. "She was a comatose spirit. They don't remember their times as spirits, not until they die."

Ming Yue's face fell. "...So she wouldn't recognize you?"

Ren suddenly bristled. "Why would you want her to? I'm the reason she's here in the first place!"

"But you're obviously not the same person," Ming Yue said. "You don't look at her like someone who would have caused that to happen."

Ren cast a final glance at Lian before he looked away toward the door. "You're her family. You can keep her from feeling lonely."

Without another word, he left.

()()()()()

Ren went back home with Jun—though not after Yoh threw him a surprise going-away party (which Ren's pride hated with a burning passion). Not that he would ever admit it, but the party was rather fun. That was, until a blushing Yoh and a glowering, silent Anna announced that the itako was pregnant.

Ren's competitiveness kicked in then. Yoh and Anna were just about sixteen and were already going to have a baby. Yoh was already at a greater stage in life than Ren was. And Ren couldn't allow that, not for long. Not to mention that the En Inn was soon going to be truly set up to receive visitors and guests soon.

Ren, once again being Ren, just _had _to find a way to bypass Yoh and jumpstart his own career. Upon some hard thought on the return trip to China, he decided upon going into the electronics corporation—that was sure to make sure that the Tao family grow successfully.

He was planning his applications for schools when his phone rang. Over the two years since he'd given Ming Yue his number, he'd at first both secretly dreaded and hoped for a call, though he'd always been disappointed by his caller ID. After a while, he'd just gone back to not really feeling much of anything when he checked his phone.

But this time, the number of the person calling was one that he didn't recognize.

"Hello?" he said, answering the phone.

"...Lian?"

Ren was not one to forget a voice, but it had been two years. "Is this Ming Yue?" he asked, unable to subdue the fact that his heart was starting to beat faster.

"No. It's...Lian."

Ren was speechless for a moment. "So...you woke up then." _Obviously_.

"About a month ago," she elaborated. She paused. "My sister told me that you helped me wake up. And, um, we moved back into China. I was wondering...if I could meet you."

()()()()()

A week later, Ren had traveled into Beijing. He waited for her at the entrance to the Forbidden City. She was coming with Ming Yue, but Lian had told him that Ming Yue would leave them be for awhile.

Ren was struggling to subdue his nerves. He had no idea if Lian had changed from the spirit that he'd known. Obviously, she didn't remember him. But he had no idea of how she acted before he had met her, before she had been consumed by her loneliness and hatred toward herself.

"Hello, Ren."

Startled, Ren turned his head to see that Hao was sitting beside him on the bench. Once again, God was wearing a red kimono—although, there were no cats around this time. Still, though, Ren's mood was instantly soured.

"You haven't forgotten what I said," Hao stated calmly, looking out at all the passing people.

Ren didn't need to answer him.

"Here's the deal, Ren: if you go down the path you're going today, you're going to end that girl, permanently," Hao said, turning his gaze to Ren's. "I'll tell you, it won't be for years. But it'll happen."

Ren just stared at him. He had no idea whether Hao was telling the truth or not...but something told him that there was something about Hao's words that rang with truth.

"The thing I get from our deal could come out two ways," Hao continued. "One, I get her spirit if you go down this path—meaning she dies. Two, you go down the other path and never understand the complete happiness that she would have given you. Call it a bit of revenge if you want." He shrugged.

There was just something about the conversation that made Ren know that Hao couldn't be lying. "...What will she die of?" he asked.

"Childbirth."

Ren's mouth hung open for a moment before he regained control of himself. "What, you won't let us revive her?"

Hao smirked. "I haven't really decided that, yet."

And then he was gone.

Ren sat there, staring at the spot where Hao had been while thoughts rushed through his mind.

_I can't do that to her again._

He stood up and began to walk away.

"Lian!"

He stopped short and turned around to see a pair of twins walking quickly toward him. The one with hair that went past her waist was easily identifiable as Ming Yue, while the girl with shorter hair—and brighter-colored clothes—was Lian. Ming Yue was waving excitedly, while Lian's wave was more reserved, though her eyes were excited.

Though he was apprehensive, he waited for them. At one point, Ming Yue stopped her sister and whispered to her, and then Lian shyly came forward by herself. Ren would have felt more awkward about this situation if his stomach wasn't churning at what Hao had told him.

Then, Lian blurted, "I remember you, from my dreams."

Ren, usually so strong, suddenly couldn't hold it in anymore. He leaned in closer to her so as not to be overheard. "Lian, I was responsible for you being in that coma. I could have killed you."

She looked a little taken aback, but she shook her head. "You're a shaman, and you helped me. You aren't who you were, I know that well enough."

He paused. "I _could _kill you. Trust me. Someone's told me what will happen to you if you stay around me. You'll die."

And Lian just looked at him. "All I know is that when I'm sleeping and I see you, I'm not lonely. And right now I'm not lonely, either. And we all die eventually... I sort of have before, already, and you helped me then." She paused. "Whoever told you that must be—"

"Don't!" Ren said, cutting her off. "Don't…don't say anything about that person," he said more quietly. "He's not someone you should mess around with. He…he's God. If you say something bad about him you really will die."

She shook her head once more. "I don't care. I…don't really care about anything right now," she said with a smile. "I told you, I'm not lonely right now. I don't care if I die by not being lonely. That's what I want."

* * *

><p><strong>The End<strong>

* * *

><p>AN: Damn me and my ambiguous endings. Be happy, originally it was going to be so sad it would have made me cry. Damn it, I can't write sad endings for shit.

Hope you all had a wonderful time reading, don't forget to review on your way out~!


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